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Old 14 Jun 19, 11:17 AM  
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VeryexcitedH
slightly serious Dibber
 
Join Date: Mar 13
The Uni Gang turn 40 in NYC - Pre Trip Report

Welcome to my trip pre-trip report…although this is actually being written 8 months after our trip!

I hadn’t thought to do a trip report and made no notes whilst I was away but I recently completed a trip report for WDW in July/August 2018 (link here if you want to read it) and as I had no notes for the last few days I used google timeline to figure out what we’d done. I realised I could use this to give a rough idea of what we did in NYC so that I have a document to reflect on in years to come. I have also just made a photobook of the trip for me and my friends and loved reliving it through pictures.

Who?

So, we are ‘The Uni Gang’. We met at University College St Martin’s (UCSM) in 1997 and have been firm friends ever since. We’ve been through the usual of growing up, boyfriends, fiancés, weddings and having children. There were us 5 girls to start off originally and now there are 10 adults and 11 children. We’re completely outnumbered!

I haven’t got permission to post photos of the gang so will refer to them by initial and post non-descript scenery photos!

There’s me Heather and A, H, B and E.

Get togethers have evolved from rowdy nights out in Lancaster and around the areas we live in to couples to kids outings and when we all meet together it is crazy as there are 21 of us which makes it difficult! If you’ve done the maths you may realise that as we were at university in 1997 we are turning 40 this year and last. When I came back from my first trip to WDW in August 2013 I mentioned to the girls that we should do something special when we turn 4-0. We had lots of chats about it and decided we would have a girly trip to NYC and start saving. That gave us 5 years!

When?

H was first in August, quickly followed by A in October and E in November. Then came the lull until B whose birthday was in April and little old me who is yet to turn 40…my birthday is in July. 3 of us are teachers so we knew we needed to look carefully at the dates and find a time in the year where all our holidays were the same but was also in the middle of all the birthdays. In 2016 we looked at the holidays we had in Autumn term 2017 but they were different. Boo! The following year we looked at the holidays for Autumn 2018 and they coincided! Yay! That was decided….October 2018.

With a date in mind, once we were 11 months out, I started researching different deals throwing suggestions at the gang to price check. We had a meet up in December 2017 so I spent the morning searching the internet for deals. I found the perfect deal. Flights MAN-JFK, 22nd October 2018, Double Tree Suites by Hilton on Times Square for 4 nights £627pp, returning 26th October.

All the girls were on board so I maxed out my credit card booking it. Very exciting!

What?

We then continued to save but forgot about the trip until it was more or less upon us. We’d had a couple of evenings spent chatting about the different things we wanted to do and we made a list.

This included:
9-11
Central Park
Ella’s Stardust Dinner
ESB
Hop on, Hop off
Statue of Liberty
Grand Central Station
Carlo’s Bakery
Highline
Roof Top Bar
Basketball game

We also knew that we wanted to go and see a theatre show so in summer we had a look and found that Pretty Woman was showing at the Netherlander Theatre so we booked that for the Wednesday night. Other than that no firm plans were made until the week before. I used my Halifax Clarity Card to get the best deal, tickets were approximately £120 each.

A was in charge of searching for a place to have our birthday meal and booked Buddakhan on recommendation for the final night.
We searched for a basketball game but unfortunately it wasn't on during our stay.

The week before we left, A’s DH had planned a surprise party for her birthday. Together we colluded and turned her surprise 40th into a NYC themed party so we had street names stuck up on doors, flags, the Statue of Liberty picture hung and it looked fab. It was on that fateful night that E and my DS were fortnight dancing in the kitchen when the incident happened. Oh yes…they locked feet, colliding hard in the middle and bringing a tear to E’s eye…..Upon examination of the foot it was very bruised and swollen so she spent the rest of the night sat on the sofa, drinking tea (this will become a theme!) whilst compressing the injured toe with bags of ice.

All the while my DS was a little distraught to have hurt her and kept apologising. The next morning we all received a picture of the offending toe after a trip to A&E where it was confirmed…the toe was broken. Oh my goodness…..E was most distraught as she had some killer heels for the theatre and would now be unable to wear them! And at that point she couldn’t get any shoes on her feet! Rest for the next few days was prescribed and a new pair of Ugg type boots were procured from the internet. Although they arrived on Tuesday and E could not get her foot in them, thankfully they did fit by Thursday so things were looking promising.
As E was laid up at home resting on Thursday she spent some time grouping the things that we wanted to do into areas so we had the best use of our time rather than going back on ourselves. We had a plan people!
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